Tag: social media

European Commission Says TikTok Recommendation Algorithm Breaches Censorship Law

The European Commission (EC) is once again going after TikTok, this time in a more brazen way, over its “For You” feed that it says is harmful to “vulnerable adults and minors.”

On Friday, November 6, the EU’s executive arm preliminarily found that the way the feed is designed and functions is in breach of the Digital Services Act (DSA), a controversial online censorship and age verification law.

The Commission says the algorithm behind it creates a “rabbit hole effect” – and this is the first time it has cited a recommendation algorithm as the reason for a breach.

TikTok’s “For You” feed works in a way that “the more a user interacts with a certain type of content, the more TikTok’s ‘For You’ feed algorithm recommends similar content.”

According to the EC, this “can be harmful when such endless and repeated exposure involves, for example, content about sadness, isolation or body image.”

The Commission’s “investigation” focused on legal content – meaning that there is no doubt that what is shown in the videos is lawful – but the regulator has a problem with the frequency of such content being shown to users.

As officials told the press, a single video of this kind might not be problematic, but many of them, one after the other, could be. The Commission is essentially saying that it has the right to decide what and how many videos of a particular, lawful topic an adult is allowed to watch.

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The finding does not only concern minors – it explicitly mentions “vulnerable adults” as well. An official said that “We are addressing a business model.”

TikTok, the Commission says, needs to “change the design of the ‘For You’ feed” – and the Commission has some ideas on how to do it: “rely more on users’ explicit preferences, disable viewing time as an indicator to recommend content, increase the accessibility and usability of user controls, and regularly test its algorithm.”

The “not interested” button that users can click on videos they don’t want to see “may not be enough to change the content feed” – and the fact that people repeatedly watch or like a video is taken as a sign that they want to see more of the same.

In the Commission’s own words, “The system interprets these interactions as positive signs of interest and recommends more of the same.”

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Kellie-Jay Keen charged under Communications Act over ‘grossly offensive’ X post about Islam

Kellie-Jay Keen, the British women’s rights campaigner also known as Posie Parker, says she has been charged by the Metropolitan Police under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 over a post she made on X between June 23 and June 25. She is due to enter a plea at Westminster Magistrates’ Court at 10 a.m. on December 4.

Keen announced the charge in a video on October 30. Reading the charge sheet, she said she was accused of having, “between the 23rd and the 25th of June, sent by means of public electronic communications network, a message that was grossly offensive.”

Section 127(1) covers a message “that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character.” The maximum penalty is six months in prison, a fine, or both.

Keen has not said which post is charged. In August she recorded a call, reported by the free speech and privacy site Reclaim The Net, in which a Met officer read three of her June posts back to her.

One, posted over a video purporting to show Muslims in Manchester, read “There’s nothing about this scene that doesn’t scream backward regressive sub normal culture.” Another, over a clip of Baroness Warsi, read “No one needs foreign money to understand the threat Islam poses to every last one of us.”

Asked who the offence was against, the officer said “somebody who’s read those tweets has taken offense to them and made the report.” He said the case had gone to the Crown Prosecution Service “for early advice.”

Before a voluntary police interview in September, she wrote on her Substack, “We do not have a blasphemy law in this country, and we should be extremely wary of recreating one through public order or communications offences.”

The Free Speech Union, a British group that defends people punished for their speech, is defending her. “In a free society, no religion or cultural practice should be immune from criticism,” it said, as quoted by Reclaim The Net.

The writer Paul Embery, in a post dated November 3, said Keen is asking supporters to gather outside the court.

The charge is an accusation, not a finding.

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45 Attorneys General Urgently Want Congress to Push Platforms Toward Age Checks

A bipartisan group of 45 attorneys general from 42 states, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, and the US Virgin Islands have asked Congress to pass the Senate’s Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) censorship law, and make sure the bill’s duty of care provision is included.

The letter, sent on November 3 and announced by Hawaii on November 4, was signed by the attorneys general of these 45 US jurisdictions, led by Hawaii’s Anne Lopez, Ohio’s Andy Wilson, Tennessee’s Jonathan Skrmetti, and Connecticut’s William Tong.

The same group, although smaller by five at the time, sent a similar letter to Congress in February, when 40 attorneys general urged Congress to pass the Senate version of KOSA, again, with its duty of care in place.

We have been tracking the progress of KOSA, and explained that the duty of care makes social media platforms responsible for shielding minors from content that a regulator decides is harmful, which in reality pressures sites to censor lawful speech to avoid legal action.

As for the House version, it makes everyone, regardless of age, prove it to social media companies.

The letter now makes the case for the bill, S. 1748, as a way to protect children from online harm by imposing “minimum safety standards on all social media and gaming platforms.”

In addition, the attorneys general are promoting KOSA as a way to future-proof these standards, as they say the bill’s duty of care provision would “establish a lasting standard that extends beyond the term of the settlement and adapts as technologies and design features evolve.”

The letter also reveals that the attorneys general view the bill as a way to cement the impact of a huge settlement reached with Meta earlier this year.

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Britain’s Online Censorship Law Now Comes With a Crisis Plan for Your Posts

The Online Safety Act – the UK’s censorship law – is getting its “crisis” machinery in place, and in full. As of Monday, November 2, big platforms in the country are expected to have in place a censorship plan that will be waiting in the wings, ready to be launched at a moment’s notice, or even before that – if a crisis is merely “likely to occur.”

This is what the regulator’s own paperwork, released on October 12, reveals, with the rules coming into force three weeks later. The crisis rules are part of amendments to two Ofcom codes – the Illegal Content Codes and the Protection of Children Code.

A crisis is defined as “an extraordinary situation in which there is a serious threat to public safety in the United Kingdom” that is highly likely to cause, or have come from, a surge in certain content. Ofcom also said that “local or regional crises may still meet the definition” and “an overseas event may also meet the definition.”

What is covered is content related to terrorism, hate, harassment, stalking, threats and abuse, and what is referred to as “the foreign interference offence” – which is a reference to the National Security Act, and a “misrepresentation” that “may” include “presenting information in a way which amounts to a misrepresentation, even if some or all of the information is true.”

As for the effect of such “misrepresentation,” the Act says it can influence political processes or decisions, and a foreign power can be not only a state, but also its head or government.

The posts that are at risk of being taken down are described by Ofcom as “the most highly protected forms of expression,” including “political speech.”

When a crisis hits – or is about to – these will be the first to go. “A higher risk of false positives is likely to be proportionate,” Ofcom says.

To be able to do all this, platforms must now have in place a crisis protocol, which they “need not publish” – and watch their own warning indicators.

Then, they should send in a senior crisis team “as soon as reasonably practicable if the provider determines that a crisis is occurring or is likely to occur.” Reviewing the situation afterwards should also be done in secret.

Large services will also open “a dedicated channel for law enforcement to contact the provider on matters related to the crisis.” No court order is necessary for this police hotline to be activated.

All this applies to large services (those with over 7 million monthly UK users) that are considered to be at medium risk, and any service that is at high risk. The rules cover user-to-user content on social media, messaging apps, forums, dating apps, games, marketplaces, and some AI tools.

The government has said that these steps “are not mandatory in themselves” – but a platform that follows them “will be treated as having complied” with the law. In other words, anyone who decides to go another way will have to prove to Ofcom that their method is equally effective.

It’s optional – in the British sense of the word.

And don’t worry, Ofcom has more reassurances: “The measures do not enable Ofcom to declare a crisis, nor do they introduce emergency powers.” But the Secretary of State can direct Ofcom to send a public statement notice to platforms, and they should take this into account when deciding whether a crisis is indeed taking place.

Ofcom has been working on the crisis protocol for a while, finalizing it on June 9 – the same day riots spread through Belfast after a stabbing on the Shankill Road. We reported about it then.

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‘Digital ID Checks For All’: Ofcom’s Plan For UK’s Under-16 Social Media Ban Puts Adults In The Age-Check Line Too

Privacy campaigners have argued for months that this is where an age ban ends up. In March, Big Brother Watch titled a post “A social media ban for under-16s = digital ID checks for all” and argued that because the alternatives are intrusive and unreliable, ID would be required in many millions of cases. “All of the online age verification options are highly invasive and the biometric and behavioural profiling options are highly inaccurate, meaning IDs will be required in many millions of cases regardless,” the group wrote.

Britain’s communications regulator now points the same way. Ofcom’s rapid assessment, published Oct. 29, says the face scans social media platforms use to estimate ages are too imprecise to police the government’s coming ban for under-16s on their own, and that a second check, often photo ID, will have to back them up. And the checks won’t stop at teenagers: many adults with existing accounts will be asked to prove their age as well.

Ofcom named four methods it considers capable of being highly effective at 16, Digit reported: photo ID matching, banking information, digital identity services and facial age estimation. Photo ID matching compares the photo on a passport or driving licence with a live image of the user. A bank check uses age data the bank holds, with the user’s consent. A digital ID service lets a person prove their age once with photo ID and reuse it.

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Michigan Man Arrested for Threatening to Kill FBI Director Kash Patel in Facebook Messages

Federal agents arrested a Michigan man on Friday after he allegedly threatened to kill FBI Director Kash Patel and an unnamed “associate” in a series of Facebook messages, emails, and voicemails.

The Justice Department announced the charges against Anthony Daniel Palazzolo, 42, of Chesterfield Township, on Friday.

Palazzolo’s arrest stems from a Facebook message sent to an individual identified in court records only as Victim-1 on October 8.

In that message, Palazzolo, who referred to himself as “Baby Bird,” wrote that he had “put a hit out” on the recipient and that Patel was “a dead mf too,” adding “Tell his punk ass I said it.”⁠

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan stated that after FBI agents interviewed Palazzolo at his home the following day, he continued to contact a Detroit FBI agent by phone.

Palazzolo allegedly left voicemails threatening to come to the office and “use deadly force against every single one of you government officials—FBI Secret Service will all be f[——] killed.”

Agents also alleged that he emailed the agent, a federal court in Texas, the Secret Service, and the Supreme Court with graphic threats of sexual violence involving objects and torture.

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Ofcom lists four age checks many adults may face to stay on social media

Ofcom, the United Kingdom’s communications regulator, on October 29 named four age-check methods it considers “highly effective” at proving a user is 16 or older. Ministers asked for the assessment to inform the regulations for their ban on under-16s using social media.

The four are photo ID matching, bank-based checks, digital ID services and facial age estimation, which The Register reports must be paired with a second check. Credit card, mobile operator and email checks, which Ofcom says work for confirming someone is 18 but not 16, did not make the list. A passport or driving licence is one route; the bank, digital ID and face checks are the others.

The practical effect falls on many adults, not only children, because a platform cannot know who is under 16 without checking. The Register reports that some adults may be spared where a platform can infer their age from past activity.

Dame Melanie Dawes, Ofcom’s chief executive, said the ban “can work if social media firms do highly effective age checks properly.” According to The Register’s report of the assessment, Ofcom concedes that “the risk of circumvention cannot be entirely eliminated.”

Big Brother Watch, the civil liberties group, answered the same day. Its director, Silkie Carlo, called the plan “a national ID system by the back door” and “an Orwellian assault on free speech and privacy,” and called instead for “parental controls that genuinely protect children.”

The ban rests on a new section 214A of the Online Safety Act 2023, inserted by the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026. Ministers intend to lay the regulations before the end of this year, and the ban is expected to start around spring 2027. The assessment was requested in June by the Technology Secretary, Liz Kendall.

Dawes is a career civil servant whom the Ofcom board appointed chief executive in February 2020.

Canada is on the same road. The Safe Social Media Act, Bill C-34, which would set a similar limit for children 16 and under, is at second reading in the House of Commons.

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Hasan Piker Files $72.5 Million Lawsuit Against CNN’s Scott Jennings for Allegedly Portraying Him as Calling for Lynching Black Americans

Far-left Twitch streamer Hasan Piker filed a $72.5 million defamation lawsuit against CNN commentator Scott Jennings in federal court on Tuesday, accusing the pundit of airing a manipulated video and falsely portraying him as advocating the lynching of Black Americans.

The 38-page complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, centers on an August 11 episode of Salem Media’s The Scott Jennings Show and social media posts with clips.

Jennings played an edited clip of Piker and told listeners that the streamer was “out there calling for Black voters to be lynched” and referenced “the Piker plan of returning our country to lynchings.”

In another post, he wrote that Abdul El-Sayed’s “best pal and campaign partner says the USA should resume lynchings against black people.”

Piker is seeking at least $27.5 million in compensatory damages, $45 million in punitive damages, and a jury trial.

The footage comes from a 2024 livestream, during which Piker reacted to a debate between two Black political commentators on criminal justice policy.

According to the complaint, Piker was sarcastically mocking a conservative participant who had criticized progressive prosecutors and “woke DAs.”

Laughing, Piker said something to the effect of “He said, ‘We need more Klansmen, okay? Can we go back to a better time when lynchings were happening? This is what I like as a Black man. Also, there’s no real racism in America.’”

The lawsuit alleges that the version Jennings aired was a roughly 42-second compilation drawn from multiple streams, cropped and rearranged to omit the words “He said” and the surrounding sarcasm that made clear Piker was attributing the remarks to someone else rather than endorsing them.

Jennings then added a caption presenting the line as a direct quote from Piker: “LET’S GO BACK TO A BETTER TIME WHEN LYNCHINGS WERE HAPPENING.”

The complaint states that Jennings “did not merely mischaracterize something Mr. Piker said. He took a false, fabricated, and manipulated video of Mr. Piker, added a made-up quotation that Mr. Piker never uttered, and then made accusations that went beyond even what the manipulated footage purported to show.”

Piker’s attorneys argue that the statements were presented as factual assertions about what he said rather than rhetorical commentary, and that Jennings ignored a prior request for a retraction.

The suit alleges defamation per se, defamation by implication, and false light, arguing that the accusations damaged Piker’s reputation, threatened his streaming income and sponsorships, and caused emotional distress.

As of Tuesday evening, Jennings had not publicly responded to the lawsuit. He had also not deleted the posts.

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Ideology, Intolerance, and Emotional Reactivity Behind Unsupported Claims That Online Words and Images Cause Violence

Over the last decade, politicians, NGOs, and journalists across the West have blamed online speech for real-world political violence. In Australia recently, politicians and others blamed social media for an attack on a left-wing member of parliament, Helen Haines, who was run over by a man in his car. “We’ve got these big US social media companies and their business model, to me, seems pretty incompatible,” said Senator David Pocock after the attack. “That’s something we’ve got to look very hard at as a country and as elected representatives.” Said Bill Shorten, a former Labor leader who now runs the University of Canberra, “I think that some people, through the algorithms of the big tech bros and social media, have been radicalized online.” Mike Burgess, director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), Australia’s FBI, decried a “permissive environment of violence.” And Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police Krissy Barrett said the things politicians said online “does have a direct correlation to what we see in terms of threats and abuse.”

But it was clear within hours that the alleged attacker of the Australian MP was intoxicated and likely mentally ill, and within days it was revealed that he and his family had been friends with her for years. A source close to the investigation said he “was known to police” and that “It is understood he has undergone a mental health assessment.” People online quickly discovered that the alleged attacker had posted regularly about climate change and Gaza and that the head of the Australian Green Party followed him on X. As such, he attacked the member of Parliament closest to his apparent views, which challenges the notion that his politics motivated him. As for Barrett, she declined to give a single example of things people said online resulting in real-world violence.

Correlation is not causation. Killers may have consumed violent media, but so too did practically everyone else in society. It would make sense that would-be killers, who often fantasize about their violence before doing it, would consume more violent content. And so if there is a relationship, it could show the opposite causal direction.

Moreover, relying on the testimony of killers, many of whom suffer from personality disorders or mental illness, is irrational. The man who shot Ronald Reagan said he did so out of an obsession with Jodie Foster in Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver.” Nobody proposed censoring “Taxi Driver,” Scorsese movies, or Foster, and yet politicians and bureaucrats around the world proposed mass online censorship because the Buffalo shooter said he was inspired by Christchurch.

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Hours After Re-Election, Socialist Lula’s First Move: “We’re Going to Have to Regulate the Social Media Platforms”

Barely hours after Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court declared him the winner of a historic fourth term, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva wasted no time revealing his priorities.

Standing before supporters in São Paulo on the night of October 25, the 80-year-old Workers’ Party leader declared that his campaign had been forced to overcome “interference coming from outside to inside through digital platforms” and that “we’re going to have to regulate them.”

According to Brazilian reporting citing CNN Brasil, Lula said:

“This was an election in which we had to overcome interference from outside, through digital platforms, which we will have to regulate.”

He continued:

“It is not possible that we are not aware that crime in the digital world must be treated like crime in the real world.”

He attacked “monstrous companies” that “earn millions and billions, pay no taxes in this country, and try to direct the electoral result.”

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